If Her Life Were a Story
by octocelot
Summary: They don't talk anymore, and there's a reason for that. Rated T for language.


**Happy Birthday, ****Jo (jamie roth****).**

**Using Caesar's Palace Prompts: Broken Stems**

**For What Goes Around Comes Around Contest : Johanna, Caesar's Palace. The first sentence and last sentence of the story must be the same.**

**A symbolism exercise.**

**Many thanks to Estoma for her wonderful beta-reading.**

* * *

They don't talk anymore, and there's a reason for that.

Maybe it's because one of them is too tired, or maybe it's because her tongue feels heavy and blundering.

(He wastes his breath blowing and fucking and being fucked. She simply wastes away.)

.

Her closed eyes act like a wall, caging out of her mind what she doesn't want to see, a world full of humans losing what makes them more than animals – empathy and compassion.

As she sits rooted, a thousand-yard stare is searching for a thousand years ago because that was when she was alive.

She remembers feeling rough sisal in her hands and making loops (_viola, you have a knot!)__. _

_B_ending down to scoop up shells and turning them aroundroundround in her fingers (cutting her hands in carelessness and being doted on by _everybody_ at home).

The feeling of wet sand in the shower and the swirl of the little particles swimming down the drain (the sand is lost, but at least now she is clean).

(But she never remembers swimming, because then she would be reminded of the _Arena_and what happened there.)

She remembers her stomach heaving and her shoulders shaking and salt waterdrops leaking out of her eyes. She remembers that it's called a laugh.

**.Begin.**

She remembers a story that she heard as a little girl.

It was a little story about a forgotten woman who lived in a time when the Gods weren't asleep and oblivious. (She wonders if she's already dead, and if Panem is hell. Her existence is the sin that damned her).

District Four has retained some of its folklore and stories of religion. Maybe that is because they make sure to say _these tales are just stories; how could we believe such nonsense?_And maybe because the Capitol has bigger matters to attend to, like making sure this year's Games are more fantastic than the ones before.

.

"Tell me a story, grandma!"

"Oh, one more wouldn't hurt. What about one with the nymphs?"

A nod.

"Alright, the tale begins with Dryope, a young woman in ancient times. She went to a pool to make flower garlands for the nymphs."

"She was friends with the nymphs?"

"Indeed," a smile. "It was rumored that she was a nymph herself, such was her beauty and connection with nature.

"At the pool, Dryope saw a lotus tree blooming with beautiful blossoms, and she picked the most beautiful one for her little son, who was in her arms. She was faced with a terrible sight. As soon as she broke the stem, blood started flowing from the wound that Dryope had made on the tree.

"Dryope was horrified and tried to flee with her baby, but alas, the blood of the tree had gotten onto her hand. No sooner than she had taken two steps, her feet were rooted to the ground and bark was climbing up her body. She cried out for her husband and father, but when they came, they could do nothing about it. She got out a few words before the bark covered her face."

"What did she say?"

"She asked that they bring her son to her and let him play in the shade that her leaves would provide, and to tell him never to harm a tree, for it may be a nymph in disguise.

"The end." A smile.

"Oh, that's sad." A frown.

"Not completely; her son had no memory of his mother, and so he wasn't sad." Reassuring glance, eyes darting back and forth.

"I guess."

**.Middle.**

Her district partner is everything a career is supposed to be, the shining Poseidon wielding natural selection like a sieve.

Funny how her wits fly out of her head when she sees his face four and three quarters feet away from his body, his eyelids still open and his heart still pumping blood (_maybe if I keep working, _his heart said, _my body will wake up)._He had wanted to live very badly.

Maybe if he had made it to the flood, he would have survived. He was stronger, probably would have dealt with living more easily, wanted to win more.

She doesn't pick flowers anymore. It reminds her of life in its prime, cut short.

**.Begin.**

The gong seems to go into her bones and echo in her

**.End.**

Her feet dig into the dirt as she crouches behind a bush, trembling and shaking and sobbing. She puts her mouth around her knee to keep herself from crying out. Every breath she takes is agonizing. _Will they hear me?_

When she is sure everybody is gone, she stumbles out from behind the bush and tumbles over something. Her eyes turn towards a discarded body, and when she realizes whose it is, she noisily throws up what little she has in her stomach. She leans her hand against the building wall to steady herself, and her hand comes away splotched with blood.

**.End.**

The water comes rushing towards her, roaring and devouring everything in its path. Her first instinct is to sprint inland, but then she remembers that she's in a dome and there is no escape.

.

**.Begin.**

She emerges from the arena wet and exhausted, her lungs full of corrupted water.

He is waiting for her when she wakes, and he can only watch as she rapidly draws away from him. He wants to try to reach her, talk to her, but it is impossible to get to her core without causing injury.

He thinks that getting back into her life will be difficult, but he is pleasantly surprised. She opens herself back up, and shyly shows him her heart, which nests quietly in between the scars that dutifully record her life and the protective rings of ribs. It beats erratically, he finds.

**.End.**

When she is surrounded by silver metal shaped into bars, floors, walls, handcuffs, ceilings, between lapses of consciousness and nothingness, she wonders if she was wrong for loving him, if he was wrong for loving her.

Snow sneaks into every part of her life, even though she lives in the south where winter comes late and spring comes soon and _snow should melt._

Snow looks at things he shouldn't, and Snow finds out _things._

And that is why she is here, and that is why she hurts.

(But even though he is the reason why she's here, he is the reason why she can go on.)

**.No, wait, it isn't over yet.**

When she comes home, they marry, and she has nothing to say, so she holds his hand to tell him that she loves him very much and she is glad that she can feel his palms against hers.

She wishes that she had told him; what if he didn't know?

She wants to tell him that she loves him, she's always loved him, she wants to have him forever. But he smiles and shushes her when she opens her mouth, and so she stays silent and holds his hand a little tighter.

.

People tell her it wasn't her fault, but that's all they can do. They watch as she slowly comes to a stop and travels further back in time, and they can't pull her into the present (maybe they don't want to).

There is little boy who looks too much like him and is too innocent to know that he plays comfortably in the shade of his father's legacy.

To him, the Games will be a story, Snow will be the cold white stuff that falls from the sky, the rebellion a history lesson.

And she doesn't know what to do with him.

.

**.End.**

Funny how what was left of her wits abandoned her when she heard about his being ripped apart in a tunnel like a lotus flower from a tree.

They don't talk anymore, and there's a reason for that.


End file.
